Clear Secure, Inc. (NYSE:YOU) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Caryn Seidman-Becker : And if I can just add to that we’re incredibly fired up here. We were born to do this right to make enrollment frictionless for consumers to be open at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning at airports with our amazing ambassadors who are there all day ready to help members or travelers who are still there at nine or 10:00 at night. We have hundreds if not thousands of pods at today 54 airports across the country and more coming. So we are incredibly excited. TSA PreCheck is a great program. Millions of travelers are already enjoying it and we’re excited to add to our partnership with TSA and help further this program we were born to do this and we have the infrastructure in place today.

Sarang Vora: That’s great. Thank you. I’ll pass it on.

Operator: Your next question comes from Joshua Reilly with Needham. Your line is open.

Joshua Reilly : All right. Great. Thanks for taking my question. Nice job on execution here in the quarter. You announced the $20 million cost savings. Can you help us understand how much of that savings is related to spend on CLEAR Plus versus investments you’ve been making on the platform? And maybe give us some color on what guided the decision to make these cuts in terms of the timing?

Ken Cornick : Sure. So Josh, this is really about streamlining the organization removing layers making decisions faster. Growth can be really inefficient as Caryn mentioned in her opener. And as owner operators are — the onus is on us to really drive the top line, but also ensure that profitability falls to the bottom line. So, this is really across the board ferreting out inefficiencies, ferreting out bureaucracy and this is something you can expect us to do on an ongoing basis. We are really focused on costs while driving revenue. So this is really more across the board than specific to a business line.

Joshua Reilly : Got it. And then net member retention is now down to the range that you kind of previously discussed. I guess a few quick questions around retention. What type of visibility do you have now that you’ve seen the impact of the price changes to retention? And what cohorts of customers are you seeing a little bit higher churn with? Was it Delta SkyMiles or family customers or maybe those who joined post-COVID and that are now reassessing? Maybe help us understand some of the dynamics there. Thank you.

Ken Cornick : Sure. Yes. Look this is a really incredible business from a visibility perspective. We have years and years of cohort data looking at retention. As you point out, we are to the range where we’ve been saying since 2022 we would wind up coming out of COVID. And so when we look at the retention metric that we report that is sort of based on a trailing basis on the entire base. When we look cohort by cohort to your question gross retention by cohort has been really stable right? It’s actually higher now than pre-COVID levels even as we’ve increased price. And this speaks to the passion for the brand and the passion for the product. So we’ve seen a very inelastic demand for CLEAR. And so we’re really happy with where retention is and has been.

It’s been an upside surprise over the past six to eight quarters. And I would also remind you that this metric doesn’t actually give the benefit of the price increases right? This is a member-based metric. So this doesn’t actually speak to the impact on revenues from the pricing.

Joshua Reilly : Got it. Thanks guys.

Operator: Your next question comes from Ben Miller with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Ben Miller : Thanks for taking my question. Just on international you’ve now rolled out a few different offerings internationally like RESERVE and the LinkedIn partnership. I’m curious how you think about the broader international opportunity and how some of these offerings in international markets feed into that around potentially building the brand or relationships with airports and regulators? Thanks.